In the fall of 1954, Jesse Stuart stood before a huge audience in Murray State College Auditorium. A chartered plane waited to whisk him from Murray to Flora, Illinois, where he would give another major talk in the afternoon. Stuart, a large, dynamic man, talked a full hour to the standing-room-only audience and then rushed out to catch a ride to his plane.

He stumbled and fell to the ground struck down by a massive coronary. The doctor told his wife that there were only three chances in a thousand that he would live, but his enormous will saved him. It took a full year to come back to a nearly normal life, and "The Year of My Rebirth" is the story of that year.

It begins as simply the story of a man’s fight for life. But it becomes the unique autobiography of an extraordinary personality and the vivid chronicle of an age gone by.

"I will not die, I will not die." These were the words that Jesse Stuart uttered to himself as he was struck down by the severest type of heart attack. Though his face had turned blue and his heart was beating 250 times a minute when they got him to the hospital, he did not die. Just like thousands of others who survive heart attacks every year, this beloved Kentucky novelist, short story writer, poet, lecturer, farmer, and man of enormous energies faced the dilemma of beginning a new life drastically changed by his illness.

"The Year of My Rebirth" is the journal Jesse Stuart kept in 1955, a time of severest trial yet greatest fulfillment which began in an oxygen tent and ended with his happy return to a full and vigorous life. Here are the innermost feelings and moods of a man whose heart may give out at any moment, the new respect and even love that he develops for his heart, his thoughts about God, life, land, and home.

This gregarious and extraordinarily energetic man, confined to the solitude of a single room, began a vigil over the tiny world seen through his window-cold bare hills, and winter birds, an occasional squirrel, mist in the morning , a three-legged possum. In his description of these pastoral scenes, the people who visited him, his thoughts of the past, there rises the inspirational story of a man’s search for himself.

With Jesse Stuart’s gradual recovery, his journal grows to exciting proportions. Ultimately the book, first published in 1956, became the inspirational autobiography of the lively spirit and powerful personality of one of America’s most popular writers.

Do you have a friend or loved one recovering from illness or surgery? "The Year of My Rebirth" would be a perfect gift.

In 1991, we re-published a new oversized edition with larger print. It was especially fitting that this edition was sponsored by one of Kentucky’s finest cardiologists, Dr. Charles Rhodes.

In his later years, Jesse Stuart and several members of his family became active spokesmen for the American Heart Association. Our of respect for Stuart’s work, the Kentucky Affiliate of the American Heart Association endorsed our 1991 reprint of "The Year of My Rebirth."

Working with the American Heart Association, Stuart also made a promotional film, "Heart of A Town," narrated by Edward G. Robinson. It is available for viewing at the Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore, 1645 Winchester Avenue in downtown Ashland.

For more information, call (606)326-1667.